I have been fascinated with anticolonial philosophy ever since I first read Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin/White Masks as an undergraduate student. This book was so powerful that it changed my approach to philosophy forever. Not only did I go to graduate school for Philosophy, where I ended up writing one of the first dissertations on anticolonial philosophy, I also pursued a career researching and teaching the topic. Having published a book and many articles on anticolonialism, my aim is to highlight the tradition’s distinctive insights and show how they challenge many basic assumptions of mainstream political philosophy, helping us rethink humanity, society, and justice.
This book places anticolonial theory, semiotic analysis, and contemporary Hollywood film into conversation. Synthesizing Algirdas Greimas’ semiotic square with the…
The first time I read Césaire, I was not prepared for his complete evisceration of Western colonialism. It compelled me to reexamine my understanding of Western culture and philosophy and to accept that colonialism is at the heart of modern Western civilization.
Before reading Césaire, I tended to think of racism as a psychological problem that could be fixed through education or some similar individual intervention. After reading Césaire, I came to understand racism as a symptom of a broader colonial economic and political structure.
I think Césaire’s most compelling and relevant argument is his interpretation of fascism as colonialism-turned-inward. Western powers practiced colonial policies on colonized people for centuries, with little protest among Western publics until fascists turned colonial methods against Western publics themselves.
"Césaire's essay stands as an important document in the development of third world consciousness--a process in which [he] played a prominent role." --Library Journal
This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements and has sold more than 75,000 copies to date.
Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of…
I thought Césaire’s arguments couldn’t be exceeded—then I read Fanon, whose critique of colonialism forced me to reconsider the relationship between humanity and society.
Fanon so convincingly describes the colonizer-colonized relationship that I felt compelled to rethink politics, society, and even human nature. I found Fanon’s visceral description of colonial dynamics captivating and insightful, his beautiful prose conveying tough truths.
Notwithstanding the focus on violence early in the book, I noted a strong humanistic thread running through the argument, which showed me his analysis was driven not by hatred of the colonizers but by a love for humanity.
The biggest lesson I learned from Fanon is that social change requires a lot more philosophy—and a lot more action—than we commonly assume.
First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on…
The first time I read Cleaver, I winced at his controversial personal history of sexual violence, but when I re-read the book, I found Cleaver to be a fascinating prison intellectual with compelling theories about literature, history, and human nature.
Because I read the book philosophically rather than for its literary merits, I found the organization of the book—which begins with personal letters—difficult to follow. The second time I read the book, I essentially read it backward, starting with the theoretical essays and moving to the examples, and the book made more sense.
I do not fully accept Cleaver’s theories of race, gender, and sexuality, but there are enough nuggets of truth in his writing that I come back to this book over and over again.
I love Allen’s book for two reasons: his exceptional documentation of the Black Power movement and his innovative sociological contributions.
As a student of African American intellectual history, I learned a great deal from Allen’s clear explanation of the similarities and conflicts between Black Power organizations—Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Black Panther Party, and others. Allen’s first-hand account of these movements provided me with powerful insight into the political and intellectual history of Black Power.
What’s more, Allen’s innovative notion of “domestic neocolonialism” provided me with a new, powerful tool of critique for the post-Civil Rights era. Using Allen’s domestic neocolonialism model, I have been able to make sense of why integration seems to have simultaneously ushered in racial progress and new forms of racial oppression.
Thomas’ book taught me that, when we adopt a colonial analysis, we have to rethink every category of analysis: “masculinity” and “femininity,” “heterosexual” and homosexual,” and so on. I also came to accept that there is a deeply sadistic eroticism in all racial and colonial oppression.
I learned that Western colonialism simultaneously positions African-descended people outside the category “human” while also projecting Western categories of gender and sexuality onto these colonized peoples in order to unjustifiably blame them for the worst behavior imaginable.
Thomas convinced me that modern theories of gender and sexuality not only fail to provide sufficient critiques of oppression but that they re-inscribe oppressive conceptions of identity by smuggling colonial ideology in the back door, inspiring me to rethink everything I thought I knew about identity.
The Sexual Demon of Colonial Power is a political, cultural, and intellectual study of race, sex, and Western empire. Greg Thomas interrogates a system that represents race, gender, sexuality, and class in certain systematic and oppressive ways. By connecting sex and eroticism to geopolitics both politically and epistemologically, he examines the logic, operations, and politics of sexuality in the West. The book focuses on the centrality of race, class, and empire to Western realities of "gender and sexuality" and to problematic Western attempts to theorize gender and sexuality (or embodiment). Addressing a wide range of intellectual disciplines, it holds out…
This book places anticolonial theory, semiotic analysis, and contemporary Hollywood film into conversation. Synthesizing Algirdas Greimas’ semiotic square with the theories of anticolonial philosophers like Frantz Fanon, Eldridge Cleaver, and Sylvia Wynter, Anderson reconstructs an anticolonial social ontology for use as a method of film analysis.
Using this ontology to interpret a wide range of films, the book defies the assumptions and challenges the conclusions of postcolonial and intersectional approaches. Reaching beyond the application of anticolonial theory for the purpose of film criticism, the book uses theory to interpret film while using film to illustrate and interpret theory. This concise yet broad-reaching work will challenge scholars and students of film studies, postcolonialism, and race and gender studies to reconsider class, race, gender, sexuality, and violence.
